How Student Autonomy Leads to Empowerment and Achievement
Giving students the power to make decisions about their learning helps empower them to put forth their best effort.
Pure project-based learning (PBL) is an instructional model that is always of interest to me, as it focuses on empowering students to put their best effort forth by affording them the autonomy to make choices, which combined with appropriate resources and support, often leads to high student achievement. As much as this seems ideal, the implementation and cultivation of an effective classroom environment in which students have virtually full autonomy has often remained just beyond my reach.
When given the opportunity to teach a computer science course, anchored primarily in skill development with the goal of showing mastery through content creation, it felt like the right time to shine for PBL.
My Personal Journey With PBL
As someone who experience a more traditional education paradigm, the notion of a student-driven classroom seemed disheveled and chaotic. The disparity between what a PBL classroom would look like and how I was taught in school seemed incredibly vast.
This concern quickly faded. I found, on my own journey for learning, that the easiest way to test and demonstrate skill proficiency in learning a new subject, such as computer science, was to create a product that met a set of specified requirements and an overall goal. While most curriculums provide a basic roadmap for acquiring new skills, the most impactful piece of learning came from using them in practice. Through the application of the new skills, I learned how to use other peripheral concepts such as prototyping, researching, debugging, testing, and collaborating with others. The most transformational element came from realizing that these skills of product design, allowed me to develop a better understanding of how to use the newly introduced information and skills.
Above all, this experience of working through challenges to use the new information in a meaningful way was where I really felt that a PBL environment could be the best for not just learning new information, but seeing the value in learning this same information.
As I alluded to above, the production of a product that was meaningful for me kept me motivated and resilient when it would be much easier to stop. I knew I was working much harder than normal because I had much more control over the specific details of the project. While the classroom management piece was still looming to be solved, I knew that implementing this choice was the right thing to do, especially if I was going to ask students to step far outside their comfort zone.
Topic #1: Selecting the Course and Project
PBL seemed much easier to implement with a skill based course. This drove me to first attempt a pure PBL unit of study in an introductory elective course. The course I chose was Introduction to Computer Science, which is a course that focuses on basic HTML, CSS, and Javascript skills for web development.
There were a few things that helped with this decision to start in this course:
The students chose the course. This meant they were self-selected and invested, which would help with motivation to complete the project.
The skills of web development would be new for most, but not all, of the students. This would help me manage differentiated abilities without having TOO many varieties to address.
The projects would have the same “product,” but gave a significant amount of choice in regard to the exploratory process and personalization of the final product for each student.
I had two different classes, which helped me compare the way that concepts were introduced between the two classes and how the group dynamic affected the PBL environment.
In addition, the acquisition of information would need to be provided to students so that they could acquire it in a meaningful way. In order to achieve this I provided two mechanisms for resources:
A structured curriculum (Code.org Discoveries) that had a sequential introduction of skills and practice opportunities that led up to a culminating project.
A student/teacher constructed rubric of elements that everyone felt would be appropriate to include in the final product. These elements aligned with the skills outlined in the standards. If a student wanted to research each topic individually, they would have the freedom to do so.
These two options were selected with the purpose of providing options for students to explore information in a way that helped each student navigate their choices in what they wanted to learn, at what depth, and in what order. While some could say it would be confusing to use two different instructional resources, the Code.org course was there if the student research was not working, the student could use the provided resource. This helped ensure students were not at a loss for resources they could use to learn the information and would provide more flexibility if a student desired.
Topic #2: Introducing the Plan to Students
Some people say that school is a game and students are just in a perpetual process of figuring out the rules. While the purpose of this post is not to contend with that argument, but taking the hint from this idea is that when the environment or “rules” change, the students will have a lot of questions.
Keeping this in mind, I wanted to make sure there was a slow and thoughtful roll out of this new learning structure so that students (and parents) could build comfort and feel that they were supported and set up for success in this process where I, the teacher, would be taking a less leading role.
Some of the protocols I put in place were:
Introduced the idea(s) to the students in a round table discussion where I was able to outline my expectations and students could respond in real time with their questions and concerns.
Provided a follow up feedback form (digital) for students to process our discussion and add additional questions that could be answered with the group or individually.
Collaborated on the evaluation method and scoring process to ensure students felt comfortable knowing what was expected to be present in their final version of their product.
Provided a second group discussion where we established norms and in class protocols for PBL based work. In this discussion we would outline ways to ensure students were aware of soft and hard deadlines, as well as how they could be provided feedback on their progress.
Created support groups for planning, debugging, user testing, and feedback so that students did not have to interrupt other students worktime to get support and always had predictable peer support.
Weekly goal setting documents (used during weekly teacher/student check-ins) that would be completed on Monday and weekly reflection surveys, done on Friday, where students could evaluate their progress and set up goals for the next week.
Scheduled support meetings done at minimum each week with each student (or group) to review progress and support organizational and productivity alignment to ensure students could meet their goals.
Video provided to parents that introduced the foundational elements of the PBL structure that included: description of the projects, sharing the resources students would have access to, protocols for peer and teacher support, and mechanisms for evaluation of learning.
The process for introducing the PBL learning environment is much more extensive that other scenarios. I will admit that I was concerned with how students would respond, but most students felt comfortable with the protocols and procedures that were put in place and were open to the opportunity to learn in a new way.
I believe sincerely that this process, supported with student feedback, was only possible due to the fact that students were involved in the implementation and planning process. The fact that they were able to give input on how they would be evaluated and supported helped them to feel that the system was set up for their success.
Topic #3: Implementing and Reviewing the Results
In this section, I want to talk about some of the things, based on the events of the experience, that should be kept and those other items that should be left in future iterations of the project.
Based on the initial experience, these things should be kept:
The slow introduction and onboarding of the new learning process. — Moving slowly and engaging the students in the development process helped to quell concerns as everyone was mutually invested in the process as voices were heard and modifications were made to suit the situation.
Having students help in developing the evaluation metrics make sure that in a new learning environment, students are aware of the expectations of the final product. This mitigated concerns about how the project would be evaluated and scored at the end of the experience.
Weekly meetings with students (more frequently if possible) made sure that students would stay on track with the project. Combined with weekly goal setting and reflection documents, I was able to help students review how they should be progressing. This included setting realistic timelines for students to complete parts of the project, ensuring they would be able to finish within the provided work time.
Feedback was ultimately the key to the entire process. Even with students knowing the specific criteria, the ability of students (especially in their first fully autonomous experience) to self-evaluate effectively needed multiple iterations. To help with this, at specific points in the process, I had students use the same rubric we developed together to self-evaluate their work and then during a weekly meeting, the student and I compared our scores and evaluations. This helped students begin to analyze their work more critically and not make assumptions as the designer. This was also done less formally with peers through user testing of their products.
While overall the process went well and students felt empowered by the ability to maintain a high level of control over their learning, I would do a few things differently to help the process move smoothly:
Working with students on a more thoughtful planning document would help students from getting distracted on new features they acquired during learning. We did a sketch of their desired final product, but I observed most students deviate, some significantly, from their original idea. While I assumed this was likely to happen to some degree, instances of too drastic of a departure made it more difficult for the student to determine how to progress in the design of their project. This being said, I would want to revise the design process and have a more collaborative evaluation of their development process before work begins.
I know my students worked hard on this project, but at the end I did not have as much of an account of what they actually did as I would have preferred. The weekly goal and reflection artifacts helped me to see the direction they were moving, but overall I did not have the data to evaluate what resources were used for what student and how that guided their learning of the information. This is not as important for evaluation, but would help me more effectively review the process and resources the students used to help me in revising the types of resources for the next iteration of this project or different projects. I would add some type of data collection (possibly with the weekly reflection) that would help me know what resources were used to achieve their learning.
As I mentioned above, feedback is a key piece of this process. In the future, most likely after students repeated this process, I would want to move more toward self and peer feedback as the primary mechanisms to review the success of parts of their projects. That is not to say that I don’t want to provide students feedback, but I want to help student engage in the process of reflecting on their work and not relying on me AS MUCH. This goal would be to foster confidence that they can determine on their own if they are meeting the expectations of a project (much similar to what will be required in their professional career).
Topic #4: When should you try this?
While I want to answer that question with.. RIGHT NOW, I know that is not realistic nor appropriate for many situations. So the real answer is… whenever you feel it is the right time.
One model to consider is that this could be a substitute or supplement to content you already do. The challenge is giving up the control to students to navigate the learning process on their own. A common opportunity to try is to use a THEME and have students develop an argument or artifact that showcases what they learned relative to a theme. An example could be showing what it means to be a hero (related to English Language Arts), how to address a social challenge (Social Studies), create a product to solve a problem (STEM), or anything that allows students choice in showing learning related to a central idea.
Just so you know… there are MANY other, better ideas than these, but it comes down to what you feel comfortable with trying.
My other suggestion is to start small, and possibly with a NEW skill or information for students. Starting small allows you to not invest too much time in something that may not work out as anticipated (especially the first time). Also, the use of a new skills helps MOST students start at a similar level. While, you may have some students with a bit of experience, this helps students know that everyone is working through this in a somewhat similar way and that they can collaborate and support each other.
Let me close with this…
I want you to know I was nervous when I tried this the first time. What really helped me through the first attempt and subsequent iterations was the culture of the class as it developed into an environment that valued communication, comfort-zone expansion, and a growth mindset. Above all else, even outside of a PBL unit, these attributes became key elements of student success. With that in mind, even if PBL isn’t how you want to structure your entire course, it is a great opportunity to create a community that values learning and is supportive and encouraging in each relationship.